SIDALC is an international alliance of information services on agriculture, livestock, forestry and the environment, through which ministries, universities and research centers in 22 countries in the Americas share information and services, thereby creating one of the most important windows for accessing knowledge in LAC and the world.

The Alliance provides access to information produced in the hemisphere and duly organized in libraries and other specialized information centers in the areas of agriculture, livestock, forestry, the environmental information and related topics. It offers access to nearly three million reference materials and to more than 270,000 full-text documents, including books, magazines and journals,
graduate theses and reports.

Its success lies in the fact that it has taken advantage of the intellectual capital of 178 institutions which, acting as intermediaries in the management and dissemination of information, continually expand and modernize their services in light of the new paradigms of the “knowledge society” and the advances of the digital world.

After 18 years:
- The creation of one of the largest collections of information resources on agricultural sector.
- Increased demand for reference services by users and a positive impact on the use of SIDALC’s specialized libraries.
- Effective application of tools and methodologies for information management on agriculture, including courses related to these topics.
- Increased recognition, both at national and international level, of each country’s information networks, libraries and other information centers.
- Increased involvement in projects related to information and knowledge management for agriculture.
- Greater visibility of institutional collections through SIDALC.NET and Google.com, without the institution losing its identity.
- Backups of catalogues and information collections in IICA’s servers located in Costa Rica, which has facilitated the retrieval of data when national equipment has failed.

http://www.sidalc.net

• Latin America and the Caribbean

• Remote and rural communities
• students, researchers

This Project is replicable because it is a format of public-private initiative that can be generated once there are actors willing to collaborate. The platform can also be replicated because its structure is open, which means that more organizations can take this project as a basis and develop their products and services. The possibility of implementing this platform in Africa is being explored, which is a true example of its replication capacity.

SIDALC functions as a community of specialists in agricultural information interested in facilitating open access to knowledge at global level. This community has been instrumental in developing a virtuous circle of collaborative networks that operates in a dynamic and participatory manner and where “each shares a little so that all can have more.” Each institution involved preserves its own identity and policies on the delivery of specialized information services.

The Scientific Exchange Service receives an average of 24,500 requests for information annually and, thanks to the collaboration of the participating institutions, it is able to support the research of specialists in the region. The Scientific Exchange Service between libraries and requests from users to those libraries. If we take the year 2017 as an example, with an average of four and two information items or documents requested, respectively, this amounts to a total of 59,928 items/documents distributed, equivalent to a large volume of research generated by specialists in the region. The generation of these services has had a positive impact on the participating libraries, both at the internal and the external level.

That is precisely the greatest competitive advantage of SIDALC, as an open system of hemispheric scope that encompasses both national and international institutions, creates spaces for technical cooperation, and facilitates horizontal cooperation and collaborative research.

Another factor that has increased the visibility of the records, as well as the number of requests to the participating libraries and institutions, is that starting in 2007 the records were indexed in Google Scholar, which has showcased the information contained in these institutions at a global level.

One of the most important values of the Alliance is the willingness and willingness to share in the communities and positively impact its population, the SIDALC Alliance faithfully represents this principle, since it has as a symbol SHARING and disseminating the information produced by the LAC agropuecuarian institutions, achieving with this, stimulate the rural development of the Americas and promote their well-being.